Unemployed. Evicted. Heartbroken. Most men would curl into a fetal ball of misery and die in any of those situations. Cartoonist K Thor Jensen was hit by all at once and, instead, got awesome. With no more than a backpack and a bus pass, Jensen traveled America for 60 days, riding couches and having adventures, and documented the results for his upcoming book Red Eye Black Eye, a 304 page graphic novel debuting this winter from Alternative Comics. Thor (whose name will no doubt send naughty shivers down the spines of many Newsarama readers) is a de facto member of the House of Twelve collective here in New York City and over drinks and drawing has imparted many sound and terrible truths to your humble blogger and his fellow HO12ers. Witty, wise and somewhat wrong in the brain, minicomic impresario and staple of various independent comics anthologies, Jensen is preparing the next big step in his Comics Revolution and I, for one, can’t wait to ride the bus with him.

Thor, newlywed and keeper of the keys at Portal of Evil, recently returned from a successful weekend and SPX and graces us with some answers about his book, his life and a work ethic to be envied:

KLEID: You’re the kind of guy that people know. Everywhere I go in Indie Land it seems that folks have been touched by the magic and wonder of K Thor Jensen. Give us the historical saga to this point that is your life and career, and tell us, is “Thor” your real name and if so, what’s the “K” stand for?

JENSEN: The “K” stands for “Killer” - my parents were big fans of Jerry Lee Lewis. Thor is my middle name, my Dad insisted on it. In the spirit of compromise that led to my parents’ unavoidable divorce, I have only been called by my middle name since the day I was born. The saga is long and Eddic - I was born in Maple Valley, Washington in 1976. My uncle published a sort of hybrid mini-comic/satirical ‘zine and growing up on that, old issues of Mad, and whatever spinner rack dross I could shovel into me laid the foundation for an ill-spent life in comics. I drew my first mini at 15 in an all-night spurt (not the usual kind of 15-year-old all-night spurt) “lol.” Anyways. Kept on doing that, fell in with nu-gen Seattle cartoonists like Tom Hart, Jon Lewis, Ed Brubaker, Jason Lutes, Dave Lasky, etc, who failed to discourage me. I was a bad person. Got my first break with a weekly strip in the Stranger, Seattle’s bestest alt-weekly paper. Did that for a year, moved to New York, got EXTREMELY fat, failed. Lost everything in 2001, traveled the country, put it all back together again. The previous sentence, profusely illustrated and expanded to 300 pages, is a very condensed summation of my graphic novel, Red Eye, Black Eye, available in January from Alternative Comics.

KLEID: For those who didn’t catch you serializing your 300-some odd book online, give us an idea of its journey, via commercial bus line, to comic book shelves.

JENSEN: Of course, being a mirror-creature of continual self-reflection (much like completely trademarked Marvel Comics Guardian of the Galaxy “Martinex” only without the ability to project extreme heat and cold), I was thinking about doing a book about my travels from almost the moment I left. However, it was as I circled the country (60 days, 10,000 miles) that I actually realized that telling this story and putting my life back together were one and the same thing - the book was not only a rip-roaring cuss-filled action/adventure but also was an examination of the process of finding my identity in the world, and figuring out where that identity as coming from. I spent the next four years writing and drawing it, first serializing it on serializer.net and then finishing it up away from the public eye. Jeff Mason over at Alternative agreed to publish it early this year and I’ve been polishing, editing and getting my baby ready ever since.

KLEID: Checking out your resume you’ve got stories in almost every comics anthology known to man. How did you manage to place so many shorts around the comicsphere and what’s the draw of doing these shorter stories? Wouldn’t you rather focus on large books like so many other yammering, look-at-me cartoonists with their insecurities rather than pop out fifty little tiny tales?

JENSEN: I am almost unimaginably prolific by the standards of human minds - as a teenager, i was putting out 32-64 page minicomics on a monthly basis. On a motivated day, I can turn out 4-5 finished pages without breaking a sweat. As a result of that, I kind of go a little nutty when I don’t have an outlet for my energies. So, if somebody asks me to knock out a couple pages for them, I shut my fat mouth and I knock out those pages. Doing this gives me a chance to stretch the muscles in unexpected directions, some of which are proving quite satisfying. I’m fully cognizant that I am not nor am I ever going to be an important well-regarded literary excerpted Big News novel cartoon graphic novelist. I am too scattered and follow my own inexplicable urges to a distressing extent. At the end of the day, I’m happy if I did work that is personally pleasing to me. I am lucky that there’s so many people who enjoy my work enough that they want to publish it.

KLEID: You recently got married. Has your comical output altered due to cohabitation? Do you find that it’s harder to work on your stuff now that there’s “family time”?

JENSEN: Oh, being married is so awesome. My wife is an incredibly gifted textile and surface designer, so our work bounces off each other very well. We’re both very driven workaholics so most nights we’re at home, I’m drawing and she’s building patterns. We are starting a linens and textiles business this Winter and I’m extremely excited about the way our prototypes are looking. We both understand the unique mindset that you get in when you’re possessed by your work. Conversely, we also spend a ton of time together pursuing other interests, like ill-advised bike rides to nowhere and swimming at our lakehouse.

KLEID: Now that the big book is finally leaving your hands and arriving in ours, what are the next five years like for K Thor Jensen?

JENSEN: The big news is that I just acquired my very first big-boy agent - Sam Hiyate at the Rights Factory will be representing my next book, “Downbeat The Ruler” - a historical graphic novel revolving around the 1976 assassination attempt on Bob Marley. It’s an incredibly rich, layered, terrifying story that I am doing a ton of research on to get note-perfect and I’m elated to start work on it. He’ll be starting to pitch it to publishers in January (around when Red Eye, Black Eye is released) so hopefully the ball will be kept rolling with that and it’ll see release in 2008. We have some other projects in development as well that I can’t talk too much about, but they’re all very fun. Of course, I’ll be keeping up the slate of anthology and mini-comic work - I am starting a series of hardcover artbooks as well. Come find me at conventions this year to get first dibs at new self-published titles KSOFM, GRAPS and DOGSJOURNAL. By the end of the year you’ll see new work from me in BAM!, ELFWORLD, YOU AIN’T NO DANCER, HOUSE OF TWELVE’S HEAVY METAL and probably a few I forgot about. My band, Music For Girls, will be playing more shows to support our CD. I will grow as an artist, as a writer and as a human being and I will do the best comics I can possibly do until the day I die, if not longer.

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